If it isn't too cold, cloudy, or rainy, you may find yourself at the beach over the next few days, but be advised: "Because of current rainfall, the County Health Officer is cautioning residents who are planning to visit Los Angeles County beaches to be careful of swimming, surfing, and playing in ocean waters around discharging storm drains, creeks, and rivers. Bacteria, debris, trash, and other public health hazards from city streets and mountain areas......

Why do all these prisoners love our governor? Because in his budget cuts that were released today, it proposes just that -- an early release for 22,000 low-risk inmates. "The governor says the cuts are necessary to erase a $14 billion revenue shortfall over the next 18 months. Schwarzenegger's new budget would spend 3 percent less than the one he signed last summer," according to the AP. Here is some of what is also......

An article from the Daily News takes a look at the toll the 6-month old smoking ban in Burbank is taking on its local workers, most of whom are flummoxed by the fact that a smoke break means breaking the law. According to the article, one local businessman "Barry Kessler, 48, owner of a downtown jewelry store bearing his family name, has led the charge against the anti-smoking ordinance. In the coming weeks he plans......

The Geminid Meteor showers are set to peak this week, especially on Thursday and Friday. Um, great date night, anybody? Astronomers studying the phenomenon, David Levy and Stephen Edberg, are terribly enthused: "If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor.' Those guys are serious!!! "The Geminid Meteors are usually the most satisfying of all the annual showers, even surpassing......

The LA Times is reporting this morning that "the big waves predicted for Southern California beaches failed to materialize Tuesday afternoon." Photographer Jonathan Alcorn, an LAist Featured Photos contributer on Flickr, shot these large waves yesterday in El Segundo at El Porto. These surfers seem to be riding waves in that 7-12 ft. range the Times predicted yesterday morning. Hrmmmmm? Yes, throughout the region waves were not as high as many hoped to be,......

Where are the best pickup soccer venues in the greater Los Angeles area? -- Bankole O Los Angeles is an enormous city, and soccer is a popular sport. You can find games being played just about everywhere! If you're looking to avoid organized leagues, there's soccer played on a regular basis at Rancho Park, Pan Pacific Park, the Westwood Rec Center, and Mar Vista Park (they have a new-ish turf field which is frequently booked,......

Last night I was casually checking out what various travel websites had to say about the neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Most of the summaries in Frommers sounded like this: Silver Lake, a residential neighborhood just north of Downtown and adjacent to Los Feliz (home to the Los Angeles Zoo and Griffith Park), just to the west, has arty areas with unique cafes, theaters, graffiti, and art galleries -- all in equally plentiful proportions. The......

Glass shards and hacked up pieces of plastic are all that remain of Redondo Beach's Pier's light poles which had to be cut down after one of the poles fell from todays strong winds. The poles are made of plastic, and have been aging in the sun for years. Once one pole fell, the city decided the rest had to come down NOW, before someone gets hurt, and more importantly before this potentially injured......

So I have this pretty fun tradition (aside from Three Rivers in the holidays), of going camping at Two Harbors on Catalina Island every Labor Day Weekend. The tradition originally began as a Jugglers' Festival, oddly enough, of which I was only a part due to my friend and her husband who are amateur jugglers, and because they are friends with some fairly accomplished ones. There was a juggling volleyball game on one of......

I lived in New York my whole damned life up until l made the move to Los Angeles in 2006, and even though I've been here at least a year already, I still get harassing phone calls from my friends that entail the sentence "yo, what you got over there in la-la land that we ain't got here in the greatest city in the world?" I've gone through the natural beauty, beaches and mountains,......

So, today, we wanted to celebrate the end of summer with a day at the beach followed by a bonfire. The place to do that in the in the City is Dockweiler Beach at the end of Imperial Highway and LAX - one of the only beaches in the region with fire pits. We got there early in the day to reserve a prime pit and free parking on the street (and not have to......

Several years ago, I used to be a Westsider and part of my weekly routine was to hit up the beach, whether playing ball on the blacktop at Venice, laying out and reading a book at Ocean Park, or people watching at Santa Monica. It was super-relaxing to be out in the sun, soaking up the ocean breeze, and enjoying the local culture. Part of the culture was stopping off at some of the......

Shark attacks are rare, but you wouldn’t know it watching the 20th anniversary of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. From catching a few of the shows so far this week, it seems like swimmers and scuba divers serve as chum more often than not for great whites and company. (Sheesh. And we needed another reason to stay out of Santa Monica beaches?) On Sunday, the two-hour “Ocean of Fear: The Worst Shark Attack......

The good thing about Chicago is that the beach that lines its Eastern border is all public beach. That's not so true about the city's suburbs. And in Malibu, it's tricky at best (remember the whole Geffen debacle?) But there are workarounds and if you want to get your sexy nerd tan on, the Los Angeles Urban Rangers have announced their "Malibu Public Beaches" Safari: The "Malibu Public Beaches" safaris will show you how......

Blended drinks make me happy. They remind me of laying out on the beaches of Maui while soaking up the sun. The cold texture and gulping the last frothy bit from the glass are extra bonuses. A strawberry margarita is, hands down, my blended drink of choice. With that said, a well blended Good Luck drink from the Good Luck Bar in Los Feliz gives the strawberry margarita a run for its money. A......

Now that classes have wrapped up at UC Santa Barbara, this is the best time for a weekend getaway 90 minutes north of LA in Isla Vista. If parties are your thing, this weekend should find Del Playa and Sabado Tarde sprinkled with farewell bashes as the kids pack up for a summer back home. But if peace and quiet are your thing, cruise up the 101 in a week or two when pretty......

LOST fans track down LA Times issue from Wednesday's season finale Man in ice cream truck arrested for selling pot-cicles in Texas Fire at a two story strip-mall in Chatsworth causes a quarter million in damage Murder suspect of 9/11 hero kills himself in San Bernadino Charges will not be filed against actor Ryan O'Neal for the Feb. 3rd brawl Carol Burnett's lawsuit against 20th Century Fox over Family Guy parody of Charwoman is......

LAist has been giving a lot of love recently to the many fine eating establishments that exist all over the basin. No matter what type of cuisine you like, there’s a long list of restaurants that can meet the grade. However, there’s also been a noticeable lack of Orange County representation in these reviews. True, 95% of the non-five-star restaurants in OC are chains not worthy of being reviewed, unless you want to debate......

We live in a town of talent. A talented town. Yet, the talent that's making the most noise, is usually (dare we say it?) without talent. We think of Paris Hilton at this juncture. We think of the many would-be famesters that litter our clubs and sidewalks and cafes while off the set from their "reality" shows involving our fair beaches. While these no-talents (because haven't we established that?) run around and make a......

Show Date: Saturday 4/14/2007 Venue: Temple Bar, Santa Monica $15 @ 10:00 p.m. Artist: CéU Album: CéU Label: Six Degrees Records On April 14, CéU (pronounced “say-ew”), the talented young Brazilian singer/songwriter, debuts in Santa Monica at the Temple Bar to celebrate the release of her self-titled debut album, co-released by Six Degrees Records and Starbucks Entertainment. If you like or are interested in exploring contemporary Brazilian music this is a show that’s not......

5. Airbus was actually going to dis LAX until a few weeks ago because the airport was so far behind on the infamous ~$50 million modifications needed to accommodate the 8-story tall village-in-the-sky. So while 550 Lufthansa passengers will arrive simultaneously (9:30 a.m. PDT Monday) at New York's JFK, the LAX-bound A380 is practically a test flight, with only handful of Airbus techs and some heavy equipment (although it's rumored that Samuel L. Jackson......

Ice hockey isn't the most popular game in a land of beaches and palm trees, especially when you're losing. With this town's reputation for bandwagon fans, it's no surprise that the Kings -- dead last in the Western Conference and playing like jokers -- have been shuffled to the bottom of the deck. They even tossed away an ace, team captain Mattias Norstrom, in a gamble to add future draft selections (they now have 21......

The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously last week to sell billionaire David Geffen a 10-foot buffer zone of the public beach that abuts his Carbon Beach-front property in Malibu. For about $140,000, the Trip-C supposedly put to rest a decades-long debate over Geffen's property rights (Geffen finally granted access to the beach in 2005). We visited Carbon Beach to assess how this deal might work out and found only about a dozen or so......

Watch as a fun party anthem is effortlessly transformed into a weirdly hostile beachfront bacchanal where Sondra Prill's command to "Make my day!" is more reminiscent of Dirty Harry than Technotronic. Oh, those sweet days when North America's beaches were dotted with neon bikinis, mirrored sunglasses and oiled musclemen.......

New York Times Does Culver City "Clearly, things have changed. Culver City, once considered a place to drive by on your way to somewhere else, has become Los Angeles's newest stylish neighborhood, a magnet for lovers of the arts, good food and culture. One part Hollywood nostalgia, one part modern design, the city-within-a-city now inspires expressions like “nascent Chelsea” and 'L.A.'s new restaurant mecca.'”(New York Times) What's in Your Fish? Pesticide and We Have......

Dear Sabrina's Vagina is a weekly column that gets published when the parts connected to the vagina get up off their ass and reply to poorly written letters, very poorly. If you feel the need to have a vagina berate you with insulting comments please send all messages here. Otherwise, you can visit the author here and watch her yell at countless amounts of other people. Dear Sabrina's Vagina, Recently I went on a......

10) While LA's Silversun Pickups can't seem to shed the Smashing Pumpkins comparisons despite releasing a record -- "Carnavas" -– that tops anything Billy Corgan's done since Siamese Dream, the only think rockin' in Chicago these days is the back seat of R. Kelly's stretch Benz. 9) Ex-Illinois Governor George Ryan may be headed to jail for his activities as a corrupt, crony-lovin' highway-to-nowhere-building Republican, but he at least had the foresight to impose......

It's been a great ride, but the wheels have finally come off the bandwagon for The OC. TMZ is reporting that Fox has officially cancelled the show, with the final episode airing on February 22. As Tony mentioned a month ago, ratings for the suburban drama have been plummeting from the days of '04 when it was the must-see program on Wednesday nights. Certainly to many non-Southern Californians, "The OC" was the first exposure......

Before the current tyrannical rule of Tony Pierce, Carolyn Kellogg was the editor of LAist, in a time many yearn for. But she decamped for the University of Pittsburgh, where she's getting an MFA in creative writing. In between bouts of homesickness, she blogs about books and podcasts interviews with writers who rock at pinkyspaperhaus.com. Top 10 LA Things You Don't Realize You'll Miss, Until It's Too Late 10. Beaches. I hardly went to......

When it rained this weekend 150 tons of trash from LA's sewers flushed beneath us and ended up in the ocean. This is why we can't have nice things. "The volume of trash collected at the L.A. River boom is a powerful reminder that everything in the street - trash, cigarette butts, pet waste, even oil that leaks from cars - washes into the ocean after each heavy rainfall," said Emma Ayala, Head, Public......